Daily Archives: August 7, 2017

BLACK HISTORY

Northwest Ordinance

August 7, 1789: President George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory [the region south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River] and one of its provisions was the prohibition of slavery in the territory which had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division helped set the stage for national competition over admitting free and slave states, the basis of a critical question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War. (BH, see February 11, 1790)

Dred Scott

c 1800: Scott born a slave in Virginia. (BH, see Aug 30)

In 1830: after Peter Blow’s failure to farm in Alabama, he moved to Missouri with his slaves (including Dred Scott). (BH, see May 30, 1822)

In 1832, Peter Blow died.

In 1833 US Army Surgeon Dr John Emerson purchased Scott and went with him to Fort Armstrong in Illinois, a free state (admitted as a state on December 3, 1818). (BH, see October 21, 1835; see Dred Scott for full story}

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith

August 7, 1930: a white mob lynched Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. The two young black men, 18 and 19 years old respectively, had been arrested that afternoon. They were accused of attacking a young white couple, beating and fatally shooting the man, and attempting to assault the woman. Once the men were detained, word of the charges spread and a growing mob of angry white residents gathered outside the county jail.

Around 9:30 p.m., the mob attempted to rush the jail, but was repelled by tear gas. An hour later, they successfully barreled past the sheriff and three deputies, grabbed Shipp and Smith from their cells as they prayed, and dragged them into the street. By then numbering between 5000 and 10,000 people (half the white population of Grant County) the mob beat, tortured, and hung both men from trees in the courthouse yard, brutally executing them without benefit of trial or legal proof of guilt. As the men’s bodies hung, members of the mob re-entered the jail and grabbed 16-year-old James Cameron, another youth being held for the crime. The mob beat Cameron severely and were preparing to hang him alongside the others when a member of the crowd intervened and insisted he was innocent. Cameron was released and the mob later dispersed.

Enraged by the lynching, the NAACP traveled to Marion to investigate, and later provided United States Attorney General James Ogden with the names of 27 people believed to have participated. Though the lynching and its spectators were photographed, local residents claimed not to recognize anyone pictured and no one was charged or tried in connection with the killings. A photograph of Shipp’s and Smith’s battered corpses hanging lifeless from a tree, with white spectators proudly standing below, remains one of the most iconic lynching photographs. After seeing the photo in 1937, New York schoolteacher Abe Meeropol was inspired to write “Strange Fruit,” a haunting poem about lynching that later became a famous song recorded by Billie Holiday. [Black Past article] (see Nov 20)

Race Revolt

Black Panthers

August 7, 1970: George Jackson’s [see Aug 21, 1971] 17-year-old brother Jonathan Jackson, burst into a Marin County courtroom with an automatic weapon, freed prisoners James McClain, William A. Christmas and Ruchell Magee, and took Judge Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas, and three jurors hostage to demand the release of the “Soledad Brothers.” Haley, Jackson, Christmas and McClain were killed as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse. Activist Angela Davis was indicted for supplying the weapons to Jackson (BH, see Sept 24 ; BP, see August 21, 1971; Davis, see June 4, 1972)

African National Congress

August 7, 1990: The African National Congress announced that it ordered the immediate suspension of its guerrilla campaign against apartheid, which started in the early 1960s. While the war between the A.N.C. and the government had operated on a low level for years, the announcement was significant because it gives Mr. de Klerk political ammunition to use against the right-wing opposition to negotiations. [AFC site] (SA/A, see Oct 15; Mandela, see December 20, 1991)

James C. Anderson

August 7, 2011: CNN broadcasts a security video showing the Anderson incident. The murder, whose race-based implications had been slow to surface, shot to national prominence with the video’s release. (see Aug 20)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

Emma Goldman

August 7, 1915: Goldman and Ben Reitman were fined $100 for having distributed birth control information the day before. Goldman speaks that evening on “The Intermediate Sex (A Discussion of Homosexuality)” at Turn Hall. In the audience were policemen in plain clothes, a deputy district attorney, and a deputy city attorney. She was not arrested. (see February 8, 1916)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

August 7, 1934: the Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not obscene. (see April 22, 1935)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

August 7, 1964: the U.S. congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the power to take whatever actions he sees necessary to defend southeast Asia. (see Tonkin for expanded story; V, see Sept 13 – 14)

NYT questions strategy

August 7, 1967: in a NYT article, R W Apple, the chief of the paper’s Saigon office, called into question every optimistic assumption about the war the administration and the military had expressed. The article pointed out that 13,000 Americans had died, 75,000 had been wounded, that the war was costing $2 billion a month, that 1.2 million allied troops had been able to secure only a freaction of a country less than one and a half times the size of NY state, and that every time General Westmoreland optimistically states that the South Vietnamese military will soon be able to fight on their own, he asks for more American troops. (see Aug 8)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

August 7 Music et al

LSD

August 7, 1965: The Merry Pranksters invited the Hell’s Angels to party with them at the La Honda camp. The party went on for two days, but the police never had sufficient reason to move in. [blog article] (see Aug 24)

Henry the VIII

August 7 – 13, 1965: “I’m Henry the VIII I Am” by Herman’s Hermits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

World Trade Center

August 7, 1974: after months of preparation, shortly after 7:15 a.m., Philippe Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4″ 6×19 IWRC (independent wire rope core) steel cable. He walked the wire for 45 minutes, making eight crossings between the towers, a quarter of a mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan. In addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salutes and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head. (NYT article) (see May 26, 1977)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

August 7, 1998: bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya kill 224 people and injure over 4,500; they are linked to terrorist Osama Bin Laden, an exile of Saudi Arabia. [CNN article] (see April 5, 1999)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

August 7, 2015: in a decision that surprised many, a jury sentenced James E. Holmes to life in prison with no chance of parole, rejecting the death penalty for the man who carried out a 2012 shooting rampage that killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. [NYT article] (see Sept 24)

August 7 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

August 7, 2017: the NY Times obtained a draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which had not yet been made public. It concluded that Americans were feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicted claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who said that the human contribution to climate change was uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited.The average temperature in the United States had risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades had been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to the federal climate change report. It awaited approval by the Trump administration. [NYT article] (see Oct 9)